Where man feared to tread, we sent apes

10:29 PM,
Jan. 30, 2013

Ham was the first chimp to be launched into space and return safely.

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On Jan. 31, 1961, Ham, as chimpanzee No. 65 was called, was launched into space in a Mercury capsule; he returned to Earth a little less than 17 minutes later. His flight was a little more than two months before Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made the first manned space flight (April 12), and more than three months before the first American, Alan Shepard (May 5) achieved the feat.

Ham's flight was in a long aeronautical tradition. The first flight, a balloon flight on Sept. 19, 1783, in Paris, carried a sheep, a duck and a rooster.

The United States started sending living things into space on Feb. 20, ...